Archive for the ‘Human Rights violation in Pakistan’ Category

PoK citizens and Indian root Mohajirs challenge the entity of Pakistan.

Dreaming Kashmir out of India? Worry about Karachi going against Pakistan…..

Mijanur Rahaman – Alertpak News Agency – Karachi – 23 July 2016.

Police and Secret Service personnel had to intervene to physically separate Mohajir protesters and Pakistan military loyalists after a demonstration in front of the White House on Saturday (23/07/2016) by the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), which mostly represents ethnic Pakistani migrants from India, turned into a fracas.

In the Saturday evening protest outside the White House, MQM workers claimed that the government was targeting the people of Karachi because they supported their party.

They also urged lawmakers to raise the issue in the US Congress and also with visiting Pakistani officials “to end the atrocities being committed against Mohajirs”.

Refugees mainly from Karachi and Lahore most of them are of Indian roots protested against genocide, extrajudicial killings, serious violations of human rights. The MQM leader Altaf Hussain’s speech and statements was broadcast by whatsapp and video conferencing.

A large demonstration of MQM workers from all across US marched in front of the White House after a party convention held in Washington DC that was addressed via video link by MQM chief Altaf Hussain , who has been in exile in London for nearly two decades. Hussain and his followers exhorted the Obama administration to intervene to stop the “rampant killing” of Mohajirs in Karachi by the Punjabi-dominated Pakistani military. Hussain, who is completely blacked out in the Pakistani media and is considered a fugitive by the Pakisani establishment, urged the “mother of all democracies” to take note of the excesses of the Pakistani army that has resulted in the “cold-blooded murder” of thousands of party activists.

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Maintaining that MQM was the only liberal, secular political party in Pakistan, he urged the Obama administration to send observers to Karachi to monitor the human rights violations+ , arguing if Washington can do it for other countries, it should do so for Pakistan to

Hussain promised to visit the US in October after heightened MQM activity here, amid speculation that he might shift base after difficulties in London, where Pakistani establishment loyalists and his followers have clashed violently.

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Key MQM leaders like Farooq Sattar and Babar Ghauri have been visiting the US lately to sensitise Pakistan experts in Washington (many of whom see the Army as a stabilising force) of the developments in Karachi.

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But, supporters of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) and Pakistan Tehrik-iInsaaf (Imran Khan’s party) see Mohajirs as traitors and fifth columnists, and allege they are controlled by Indian intelligence agency RAW .

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They forcefully countered the MQM protest, and slogans and counter slogans ensued as the two sides advanced towards each other before police intervened. The demonstrations were far larger than the ones by Khalistani activists and Kashmiri separatists, who Indian activists say are backed by Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI.

While India has had its share of embarrassment overseas arising from the situation in Kashmir, it appears Pakistan has even greater problems, with both Mohajirs and Baloch groups overseas indicating that all is not well in the fractious country .

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Actually, the people of Kashmir are also frustrated on the Pakistan Govt running an illegal truce there without taking developmental there.

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Rahul Sinha, an executive reporter of ZEE NEWS published an interesting report on POK some days before, where many of POK resident wished to join India as they think POK is an integral part of India.

KARACHI, PAKISTAN — A huge controversy has broken out in Pakistan over the case of Magdalene Ashraf, a 23-year-old third-year Christian student nurse at the Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Centre in Karachi, who was allegedly raped by a doctor on July 15, 2010.

Magdalene is the daughter of Ashraf Masih, a poor Christian, who is said to have “dreamed of a good future” for his daughter after her graduation, but then all came crashing down after the alleged rape.

Instead of a rape charge, a case of simple assault was made by the police against Dr. Abdul Jabbar Memon, which falls under section 324 of the country’s Penal Code.

ANS has discovered from an informant who asked not to be named for security reasons, that a “renowned Pakistani hospital” run by the state, had allegedly declared, in its medical examination report, that a semen specimen sent to them was “not that” of the alleged rapist of the virgin Christian trainee nurse, thus depriving her of “justice in this case.”

The informant then alleged, that staff there conspired together and allegedly declared that the specimen sent to them was not that of the main accused doctor, nor of any of his “accomplices” whom it was claimed had raped the Christian nurse and thus deprived this “hapless and impoverished Christian trainee nurse of justice.”

According to our informant, the Christian trainee nurse was allegedly seduced and taken to the doctors’ mess led by a Muslim nurse and then subjected to “immense physical, mental and sexual assault” by the doctor and two other Muslim men.

According to reports obtained later that night, she was found lying on ground “nearly dead” and “drenched in blood” and taken to the hospital for treatment for her “critical condition.” Read details here….

…………IANS, Nov 26, 2010, 11.01am IST|| TOI

ISLAMABAD: Of the 1,195 women murdered in Pakistan this year, 98 were killed after being raped, says a report by the country’s first helpline for women and children.

The Madadgaar helpline released a report in Karachi Thursday on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Geo News reported Friday.

The report was compiled from news reports published in the mainstream Pakistani media.

The increasing number of incidents of violence against women is a “blemish on the face of our society and seriously hamper the efforts for empowerment of women and gender equality in Pakistan”, said Madadgaar’s project coordinator and president of the Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid (LHRLA), Zia Ahmed Awan.

He said it was “sad” that reports of violence against women have come from all parts of the country. This should be a wake-up call for the government.

The report further said that 321 were raped and 194 gang raped in Pakistan in 2010. a total of 1,091 were tortured, 126 were burnt, 383 were kidnapped, 316 were tortured by police and 491 committed suicide.

A total of 4,870 cases of violence against women were registered by police, while the total number of cases reported since the year 2000 came up to 79,909.

Awan said over 2,400 cases were reported from Punjab, 1,070 from Sindh, 998 from Khyber-Pakhtunkhuwa and 313 from Balochistan. The number of cases were less in Khyber-Pakhtunkhuwa and Balochistan provinces because of a strong tribal culture and lack of access to the media.

The UN General Assembly has designated Nov 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

At least 65 people have been killed as a result of a suicide bombing targeting a Shia Muslim rally in Pakistan’s southwest city of Quetta on Friday September 3, the latest in a string of sectarian attacks. Police said the bomber was among the 450-strong crowd and detonated himself upon reaching the city’s main square, triggering chaotic scenes, with people setting fires as others fled or lay on the ground.–AFP & Reuters Photos.

QUETTA: The death toll from a suicide attack on a Shia Muslim procession rose from 56 to 65 overnight as critically wounded people died in hospital, police said.

Police official Mohammed Sultan said Saturday that about 150 people were wounded and some remain critical after the attack claimed by the Pakistani Taliban in the southwestern city of Quetta. A triple suicide attack Wednesday night killed 35 people at a Shia procession in Lahore.

Leaders of the minority sect called a general strike in Quetta and all schools are closed for a day in mourning, police said.

Pakistan’s government is struggling to deal both with massive flooding and the incessant militant violence aimed at overthrowing the administration. — AP

Students recite lines at a Madrassa in Pakistan to learn persecution upon non-muslims. -File Photo.

Hindu Girl Held in Madrassa and Forced to Convert to Islam

Islamabad, Pakistan (CHAKRA), Tuesday, May 11th, 2010( This report is published on the basis of news received late) – A Punjabi Hindu girl from Pakistan has been kidnapped and is being held in a madrassa where she is being forced to convert to Islam. This has been brought to attention by leading Pakistani activist Ansar Burney.

Burney’s rights organization has learned that 15-year-old, Gajri who is daughter of Meghna Ram was abducted from her home in Katchi Mandi on December 29th 2009 by a nearby Muslim neighbour. This took place in the Liaquatpur in the Rahim Yar Khan District.

According to Burney, Gajri’s parents later found out that she was being held in a madrassa where she has been forcefully married off to someone in addition to being forced to convert to Islam.

The local administrator of the madrassa is refusing to speak to anyone regarding the abduction and Gajri is not being allowed to leave the madrassa resulting in not being able to speak to her parents or family members.

Burney, a former human rights activist openly condemned the forceful act of conversion in addition to the kidnapping. He has demanded her immediate release.

“Pakistan is a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which oblige authorities to protect religious minorities under international law,” he said.

After Gajri disappeared on December 21st from southern Punjab, on December 26th the local police station received a letter from the madrassa administrator stating that Gajri had embraced Islam and had married her neighbour Mohammed Salim. However, the letter was not enclosed with a marriage certificate.

The police failed to immediately inform Gajri’s parents of the letter they had received even though her parents had attempted to file a report when she first went missing. The parents were discouraged from filing a report, according to Burney.

After feeling helpless, Gajri’s parent’s went to Ramesh Jay Pal, the vice president of the National Peace Committee For Interfaith Harmony, asking him for his advice on the matter.

With Pal’s help, Gajri’s parents met the priest, Maulana Abdul Hafeez, in charge of Darul-Uloom Madrassa in Khanpur. He told them that their daughter had embraced Islam and that she was not allowed to meet her parents.

When a section of Indian society is keen to build bridges of love, peace and friendship with a neighbour, it is time to take stock of ground realities in Pakistan

byABHIJIT BHATTACHARYYA*

The Statesman, Kolkata, April 14, 2010

“Civil society” constitutes the most important public opinion maker in a multi-dimensional society like India. Hence when a section of Indian society is keen to build bridges of love, peace and friendship with a neighbour, it is time to take stock of the ground reality. It is necessary to “know thy neighbour” and to “know yourself”.

Let us begin with one of the largest English dailies The Nation, published simultaneously from Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. Editor-in-chief, The Nation and chairman of the Nazria Pakistan Trust (NPT), Majid Nizami, stated as recently as on 10 March, 2010 that “freedom is the greatest blessing of the Almighty, Who may save us from dominance of Hindus, as our sworn enemy is bent upon destroying Pakistan. However, if it did not refrain from committing aggression against us, then Pakistan is destined to defeat India because our horses in the form of atomic bombs and missiles are far better than Indian donkeys.”

Nizami revealed to a captive audience that “if one wants to have an idea of what would have been our condition had Pakistan not come into existence, he should visit India to apprise himself about untold pathetic living conditions of the Muslims there at this point of time.” Nizami thundered that “the day was not far off when we would once again conquer India” and that “Pakistan had to play a key role in liberating enslaved minorities from the clutches of Hindu majority” in South Asia.

The potential of India emerging big is unacceptable to the Pakistani ruling class. Or else, how does one justify the unsubstantiated public statement by the Chief Justice Khwaja Muhammad Sharif of Lahore High Court that the “Hindus of Pakistan are funding terror activities in Pakistan!”

The hate-India attitide does not end with the vituperative and venomous excesses of the national press and Islamabad’s judiciary. It is put into practice with all sincerity and dedication by the de-facto ruling class, the army.

Reportedly, “the Pakistani army is sexually assaulting minority women and using them as sex slaves, alleges the European Organisation of Pakistani Minorities (EOPM), an NGO working for the rights of minorities in Pakistan. In a prayer-cum-demonstration held at the United Nations, it said the Pakistani army is taking minority women away from their families, raping them and using them as sex slaves.”
Reference was made to the case of “Zarina Marri, 23-year-old school teacher from Quetta, being used as a sex slave by the Pakistani army”, alleged EOPM. It was categorically maintained that “the attacks on minorities in Pakistan were increasing” and that “the religious minorities constitute much more than five per cent – as claimed in Pakistani census – of Pakistan’s 160 million people.” The idea is to “intentionally keep the minority population low to deny them greater representation.” All in all, “Christians, Sikhs, Hindus and other minorities are constant targets of attack in Pakistan.”

Understandably, therefore, Pakistan last year ranked as the “world’s top country for major increases in threats to minorities since 2007.”
The story of the unfinished task of Pakistani establishment does not end with a newspaper group, the High Court and the Army. It is only that now the civilised world outside Islamabad is trying to come to terms with the cocktail of rabid communalism, terrorism and fundamentalism for the sake of expanding its political power base through the state-sponsored religious order’s (should one say “disorder”) foot soldiers like the ghazis, fidayeens, lashkars and mujahideens.

The flip side of this long-term diabolical plot, however, is the present masked attempt to “cultivate” the “evil society” of the non-Islamic, (“Hindu”) enemy state of India. Hence the attempt to build a bridge through the Jang group of newspaper’s English daily News. Curiously, however, the Government of India’s ban on this publication 47 years ago is still on. Thus a Government of India notification dated 19 January, 1963 stipulated “The Central Government hereby prohibits the bringing by sea or land into India of any issue of the Urdu newspaper entitled Daily Jang, Karachi, edited, printed and published by Mir Khalil-ul-Rahman from Javed Press, Mcleod Road, or any extract from, or reprint of, or any translation of, or other document reproducing any matter contained in any issue of the newspaper”. In another notification dated 30 January, 1963, the Government of India once again “prohibited” the Daily Jang, Rawalpindi, edited by Mir-Jamil-ul-Rahman. Curiously, the ban has not been lifted to this day.

However, ban or no ban, Pakistan can find its way to the “interior” of the “Hindu India” and get away scot-free for its acts of omission and commission through its media, its biased anti-minority higher judiciary and the army of Islamabad which the Pakistanis consider it to be the army of Islam!

One pities the psychic disorder of the Pakistani ruling class which is not its own creation. It has been in the genes of the “ruling class” of South Asia through the ages. One can get an idea of the Pakistani psyche in general and read the mind of Muslims in particular from the following speech of a liberal Muslim leader (Mr R.M.Sayani) in his presidential address at the 12th Indian National Congress held in Calcutta in 1896: “Before the advent of British in India, the Mussulmans were the rulers of the country. The Mussulmans had, therefore, all the advantages appertaining to the ruling class. The sovereign and the chiefs were their co-religionists, and so were the great landlords and the great. The court language was their own. Every place of trust and responsibility or carrying influence and high emoluments was by birth theirs. The Hindus holders of position were the tenants-at-will of the Mussulmans. The Hindus stood in awe of them. Enjoyment and influence and all the good things of the world were theirs. By a stroke of misfortune, the Mussulmans had to abdicate their position and descend to the level of their Hindu fellow-countrymen. The Hindus who had before stood in awe of their Mussulman masters were thus raised a step by the fall of their said masters, and with their former awe dropped their courtesy also.

“But the Mussulmans were not in a mood to learn anything that required hard work and application, especially as they had to work harder than their former subjects, the Hindus. Moreover, they resented competing with the Hindus, whom they had till recently regarded as their inferiors. The Hindus, from a subservient state, came into the lands, offices and other worldly advantages of their former masters. Their exultation knew no bounds, and they trod upon the heels of their former masters. The Mussaulmans would have nothing to do with anything in which they might have to come into contact with the Hindus. The fall of their former greatness rankled in their hearts.”

Having successfully regained the status of the “Muslim ruling class of Pakistan”, in 1947 which they had “lost to the British in 1857”, the Pakistanis just cannot forget that their predecessors (even if not necessarily bound by blood) were the minority ruling class over a vast majority of non-Muslim people which, at its peak, stretched from the Hindukush to Chittagong and Kashmir to Cauvery. Hence, “once a ruler, always a ruler” is the attitude. And that is the problem. The Pakistanis, thus, given a chance, would like to get as much and as many of their co-religionists as possible under a single religious umbrella to spread the mantra of its rule over India. Unfortunately, some Indians of “civil society” have decided to look the other way to avoid the issue thereby abdicating their duty and responsibility to protect and preserve freedom. That is the “wonder that is India”!

*The writer is an alumnus of the National Defence College of India and a member of International Institute for Strategic Studies, London

Hindu-Sikh Minorities in Pakistan: The Vanishing Communities

I was inspired to write this essay by a Pakistani journalist friend. Later, during a lecture tour in South East Asian countries, where Indian and Chinese origin minorities are also discriminated I noticed that the minorities are palpably anguished. The latest incidents of organized attacks by Bengali Muslims on hill dwelling Chakma tribals in Khagrachari areas firmed up my decision to chronicle a preliminary account of the conditions of the non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan. I had earlier written a piece on the plight of the Pakistani Christians. I have not touched upon the plight of the Shia and Ahmadiya (non-Muslim) communities in Pakistan, which require international attention. Not a single Indian Muslim religious seminary has so far condemned Pakistan for inhuman treatment of the Shia and Ahmadiya communities.

I am indebted to a member of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission and several young Pakistani writers who have boldly portrayed the pitiable condition of the minorities in Pakistan. Their voices are drowned in wilderness. The normal civil society members are also ashamed of these developments. However, I do not want to name them fearing visitations by the ISI goons.

Jinnah had said in his speech to the new nation created, called Pakistan, on August 17, 1947 to assure that his fiefdom, for which he fought relentlessly and even organized the Great Direct Action Pogrom of Calcutta in August 1946, to assure the national minorities, after 3 millions were killed in communal riots and several million escaped to the safety of Hindustan: “You are free; free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques, or to any other place of worship in the State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed-that has nothing to do with the business of the State…We are starting with this fundamental principles that we are all citizens and equal citizens of our State.”

People conversant with Jinnah’s rise as a rabid communal Muslim leader (Jaswant Singh’s white washing aside) know that Jinnah Kathiawadi lived by deceit and died in neglect (recall his Quetta visit, breakdown of his car on way to Karachi and apathetic attitude of the people in power). He was not even a practicing Muslim (a Shia), but pleaded fanatic Muslim causes. He never tried to rescue Muslim politics from the clutches of the maulanas. He was the person who boycotted the 1937 interim governments in the Central Legislative Assembly and Congress led provinces. He fabricated or organized the fabrication of charges against Congress’ ruthless suppression of the Muslims. One after another memorandum was submitted to the Governor General; all bundles of lies. The grand finale of Jinnah’s bunches of lies and prevarication included Calcutta pogrom in collaboration with Suhrawardy government, deceitful refusal to sign the Mountbatten Plan for partition, backing out from original agreement that Mountbatten would be the common Governor General for India and Pakistan and finally throwing a grand inaugural lunch on 16th August, a day of Ramadan (later shifted to dinner).

With such track record of prevarication, fabrication and falsehood Jinnah’s 17th August 1947 speech assuring the minority was then and even now treated as crocodile’s tears. If he were a democrat he would have not chosen the machetes to kill. He could not stop killing of the Hindu and other minorities in Pakistan even after he assumed the gaddi of the Governor General in true Hollywood style. Since Jinnah the Hindu minorities have continued to suffer in Pakistan and now they have become an endangered community. Those interested may read Jinnah of Pakistan by Stanley Wolpert and Mountbatten’s Report on the Last Viceroyalty, edited by Lionel Carter.

For which Pakistan Jinnah had struggled? His idea of Pakistan was limited to the vision of Dr. Iqbal-whole of Punjab, Sind, Balochistan, NWFP, FATA areas and Kashmir. He had no plan for Bengal and Assam and other Muslim majority areas in India. Later the Bangistan theory of Chaudhry Rahmat Ali propelled the Pakistan protagonists to amalgamate Bengal and Assam and create the eastern wing of Pakistan.

However, it must be said to the credit of Jinnah that in the absence of Dr. Iqbal and any other Muslim poet he could trust, he had commissioned a Hindu to write the original national anthem of Pakistan. India and Pakistan have another anomalous situation in common. Iqbal, the progenitor of Pakistan, had composed the national song Sare Jahan se Accha—. It is still used as one of the national songs. Jinnah, on the other hand had summoned Jagannath Azad, son of Lahore-based poet Tilok Chand Mahroom, just three days before the creation of Pakistan, to write the country’s first national anthem. It had stirred up a debate in that country. It is claimed that Jinnah sowed the seed of secularism by inviting Jagannath Azad to write the national anthem. However, Pakistan’s first national anthem composed by a Hindu was discarded by Pakistan in 1950. What a great disrespect to the father of the nation! Some leading Pakistani thinkers correctly said that Pakistan exists on the venom of anti-Hindu elixir.

Demographic distribution of Hindus in Pakistan (source Wikipedia)

At the time of Partition in 1947, the Hindu population of Pakistan was estimated at approximately a quarter of the total population. For example, the population of Karachi, Pakistan in 1947 was 450,000, of which 51% was Hindu, and 42% was Muslim. By 1951, Karachi’s population had increased to 1.137 million because of the influx of 600,000 Muslim refugees from India. In 1951, the Muslim population of Karachi was 96% and the Hindu population was 2%. In 1998, the Hindu population in all of Pakistan was 1.6%, and the most recent census would certainly be expected to demonstrate consistent dwindling demographic trends and further diminution of Hindu population.

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Hindu Children do not get admission into schools.

The migrating Pakistani Hindus in India also face various troubles to get long term visa.

Hindus are converted into Islam by force.

Hindu Girls & Women are abducted, molested & raped.

Hindus and Sikhs are forced to pay Jizya Tax by Talibans.

Hindu Employees are beaten to death in the factory complex.

Provocations against Hindus are inserted in the school text books.

Hindu children are forced to pray Namaz & generally called as ‘Kaffir Kutta’ – Infidel Dogs.

Hindu farmers and labours are forced to do their jobs as bonded labours, with very paltry payment.

80% of lands are snatched from the Kaffir Hindus to fortify total Islamisation of Pakistan.

The about 20% population of Hindus in Pak in 1947 came down to 1.6% in 1991.

Hindus in Pakistan are treated as 3rd Class citizens or not the citizen of Pakistan at all.

Rienk van Velzen, World Vision’s regional communications director, told AFP by telephone from the Netherlands that all staff in the office were Pakistani. — Photo by AFP

At least five killed as gunmen attack NGO in Mansehra

PESHAWAR: Militants armed with guns and grenades stormed the offices of a US-based Christian charity in Pakistan on Wednesday, killing five aid workers in an attack blamed on militants.

The gunmen seized the World Vision building near the town of Oghi in the Mansehra district of North West Frontier Province (NWFP), where Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants have waged a deadly campaign of attacks.

Police and World Vision’s regional spokesman said five Pakistani staff, including two women, were killed and seven other employees wounded when up to 15 gunmen arrived in pick-up vehicles and began firing on the aid workers.

“They gathered all of us in one room. The gunmen, some of whom had their faces covered, also snatched our mobile phones,” said World Vision administration officer Mohammad Sajid, who was in the office at the time.

“They dragged people one by one and shifted to an adjacent room and shot and killed them.”

reports :

U.S. Charity Is Attacked In Pakistan; 6 Are Killed

By ISMAIL KHAN ||Published: March 10, 2010

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Six Pakistani employees of the American Christian charityWorld Visionwere killed Wednesday and seven others were wounded in an attack on the aid group’s offices in a remote village in northernPakistan. Read details here…..

Rienk van Velzen, World Vision’s regional communications director, told AFP by telephone from the Netherlands that all staff in the office were Pakistani.

“The sad news is that five local colleagues were killed — three male and two female. We have seven colleagues injured,” he said.

The organisation has been operating in the area since October 2005, when aid workers flooded into the northwest after a 7.6-magnitude earthquake killed more than 73,000 people and left about 3.5 million homeless.

But many charities have since left the area, as militant violence has soared. In February 2008, four aid workers with British-based group Plan International were killed in a similar gun and grenade attack in Mansehra town.

Police officials said the militants on Wednesday opened fire and detonated hand grenades at the site near Oghi, about 80 kilometres north of Islamabad, killing the five before disappearing into the hills.

“Police rushed to the area after receiving information about the attack, but the attackers managed to flee,” senior police officer Waqar Ahmed told AFP.

“We chased them, there was an exchange of fire, but the gunmen escaped into the mountains.”

Ahmed blamed the attack on “the same people who are destroying our schools” — a reference to Taliban militants opposed to co-education who have blown up hundreds of schools across the northwest in the past three years.

“Now they want to disturb relief work in quake-hit areas,” Ahmed said.

A wave of suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan has killed more than 3,000 people since 2007. Blame has fallen on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants bitterly opposed to the country’s alliance with the United States.

But Azam Tariq, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, said he was unaware of Wednesday’s attack, telling AFP by telephone: “I have no knowledge about the incident and would not like to offer any comment.”

World Vision’s website describes the group as “a Christian relief, development and advocacy organisation” founded by a US priest.

It says the aid group is “inspired by our Christian values”, but stresses that the organisation does not proselytise or make aid conditional on a person’s faith.

The United Nations decided last year to relocate a limited number of its international staff from Pakistan because of security concerns.

The UN’s World Food Programme office in Islamabad was attacked last October, with five aid workers killed in a suicide bombing.

On February 3, a bomb attack in the NWFP district of Lower Dir killed three American soldiers and five other people at the opening of a school just rebuilt with Western funding after a militant attack.

In the northwest tribal belt on the Afghan border Wednesday, police found the bodies of two men accused by the Taliban of spying for the United States.

Two Sikhs who were kidnapped over a month back have been beheaded by the Pakistani Taliban in the country’s restive tribal belt.

Some more members of the minority community are still in the custody of the(^ Pic. from JIhad News ^)rebels.

The body of Jaspal Singh was found in the Khyber tribal region, located a short distance from Peshawar, while the body of Mahal Singh was found in the Aurakzai Agency, sources told PTI on Sunday.

Sources said the Sikhs were kidnapped from the Bara area of Khyber Agency by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. They were kidnapped 34 days ago and the Taliban had demanded Rs 30 million as ransom. Two of the Sikhs were beheaded after the expiry of the deadline for the ransom payment, sources said.

Militants in Orakzai and Tirah Valley have been charging the non-Muslim residents Jazai or Islamic Tax on the pretext of providing security to them and their business in the area.

A large number of Sikhs have migrated from Orakzai after being threatened by Hakimullah Mehsud led militants.

The kidnapping occurred in an area where there the government has virtually no control and the militants are in a dominant position, sources said.

And Islamic intolerance in Pakistan has already finished the Hindu-Sikh minorities in the country strangling their number in 1.86% from a sizeable number of 16% of Hindu-Sikh community even in 1950.

Minority affairs’ minister sees blasphemy law revision this year

WASHINGTON: Pakistan plans within this year to revise its laws against blasphemy, which have long been criticised as a way to abuse minorities, a government minister said.

Shahbaz Bhatti, minister for minority affairs, said religious reconciliation was a little-noticed priority for President Asif Ali Zardari’s civilian government in Pakistan, which lies on the frontline of the US-led war against extremism.

Bhatti, a long-time Roman Catholic activist whose position was given full cabinet status for the first time, said he was speaking with political parties to present revisions to the blasphemy law by the end of 2010.

“This is a democratic government which has a commitment to repeal all the discriminatory laws affecting the rights of minorities,” Bhatti told AFP in an interview in Washington.

“We are using military action to fight terrorism and we are using economic opportunities, but another thing which is important is that we are pursuing interfaith harmony,” he said.

Bhatti said that while he did not envision an immediate repeal of blasphemy laws, the revision would require judges to investigate cases before they are registered — creating oversight of the police, who are often accused of abuse.

The revised law would also assign punishment equivalent to that under the blasphemy laws for anyone who makes a false complaint, he said.

Bhatti was in Washington to attend the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual Christian-organised gathering drawing national leaders. He also met with US lawmakers, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom and Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pakistan’s law against blaspheming Islam carries the death penalty. While no one has ever been sent to the gallows for the crime, activists say the law is used to exploit others out of personal enmity or business disputes.

In June last year, blasphemy allegations led to mob violence against Christians in Punjab that caused hundreds to flee, according to the US State Department’s annual report on religious freedom around the world.

The report said there was particular discrimination against the Ahmadiya community, which Pakistan considers non-Muslim as adherents do not believe Mohammed was the last prophet.

In another incident in September, a 25-year-old Christian jailed on blasphemy allegations died in prison. Activists suspected he was tortured, but authorities said he committed suicide.

Pakistan, founded in 1947 as a Muslim homeland during the bloody partition of British India, is overwhelmingly Muslim. Religious minorities however form some five per cent of the population, according to government figures.

Among Muslims, strong tensions also persist between the majority Sunni and the minority Shia sects. Bombings on Friday killed 33 people in Karachi, including an attack near a bus carrying people to a Shia procession.

In UN bodies, Pakistan has butted heads with Western democracies by sponsoring resolutions on fighting “religious defamation.”

But Bhatti vowed to make progress at home.

In December, the government launched a drive to set up more than 120 “district interfaith harmony committees” around Pakistan to help resolve conflicts surrounded minorities.

Bhatti said he has personally visited religious communities around the country including more than 30 madrassas, or Islamic schools, to encourage tolerance.

While he said he met a positive reception, Bhatti was under no illusions about his safety, saying he has faced death threats.

“When I started this struggle I said that I would not compromise on the principle of religious freedom and human equality,” he said.

“These principles are the nucleus of my life. I will live for them and I will die for them.”

#Alertpak# says :From the above it is difficult to know the peril in which the Hindu minorities are dying day by day without any notice of anybody. The political rulers of Pakistan, administrative authorities, police, judiciary, human rights watch – nobody care for this unwanted race in Pakistan. The downfall of 16% Hindus in 1947 in the lowest of 1.86% now a days speaks only a ghastly ethnic cleansing and unbearable persecution upon the Hindu minority in Pakistan by the majority Muslims. The Hindu race in Pakistan will be fossilized in some next years.The questioned “blasphemy law revision” may save the minority Christian in Pakistan as they have strong organisation of their own with an international support of the global Christian community. But there is no international Hindu community to spare a single word or give a support in favour of the dying Hindu race in Pakistan. The so-called Hindu leaders of India are interested in bogus Rama temple in Ayodhya, but they are not interested to save the followers of Rama in Pakistan. And some paper organisation of Hindus under different signboards in Pakistan wait for some Govt recognitions or grants for personal benefit. What a tragedy of Pakistani Hindu Minorities for ever.